


Move like the air

by Philipa_Moss



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bisexuality, Coming Out, Family, Future Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-03 00:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19452208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/pseuds/Philipa_Moss
Summary: Andrew Lin's muscles would always be the reason Yev realized this crucial thing about himself and that, as MasterCard said, was priceless.





	Move like the air

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mother Mother’s “I Must Cry Out Loud.”
> 
> This was written after I went on a deep dive and watched seasons 1-9 over the course of two weeks. So it’s as “canon-compliant” as this weirdass show allows, but also if you jumped ship in an earlier season, or if you’re reading this in the future, it could totally be canon-divergent AU.

After the second dream about Andrew Lin left Yevgeny sticky and confused, he admitted that maybe, just maybe, he was in the middle of a sexuality crisis and just hadn’t noticed it before. The thing about Andrew Lin was that he has a pretty mouth (pretty mouth, Jesus, he was more far gone than he’d realized) but he was jacked. Like, way jacked for a seventeen year old. Yev lifted a little, just to stay presentable and keep Emma interested, so he knew how much effort it took. He was way too busy to look like Andrew Lin. He had homework to do and video games to play and oral sex techniques to research. He didn’t have time to sculpt himself into the living, breathing replica of one of those plaster statues his mom installed in the back yard. 

And he didn’t want to. The point was not to look like Andrew Lin, the point was that Andrew Lin looked like a _man_ , like a _dude_ , not to be gender essentialist about it, and there was no mistaking Andrew for the type of people Yev usually went for, i.e. long-haired girls who came up to his forehead and pretended to need his help opening jars. Andrew walked around dick-first like Tom Hardy at his most Tom Hardy.

Oh God. There was that time Emma’s friend Dasha showed them Tom Hardy’s old MySpace photos and Yev got halfway to a half-chub. He always thought it was the weed but, oh God, it was probably Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy did it for him. Yev was into guys.

This was terrible. He couldn’t talk to Emma about it, because she’d probably get all offended and break up with him, which was absolutely not an option. Yev was into girls still. Too. Also. He was into Emma. And if that made him bisexual, then fine. Fine, fine, fine. If he thought about it, it wasn’t that much of a shock. Ari in his history class was hot AF, and they weren’t a girl. That plus the Tom Hardy thing… The signs were there. Yev felt like an idiot for not piecing it together sooner.

He got up, peeled off his boxers, yanked the sheets off the bed, and dropped everything into a pile. Then he stuck his head out the door. When he didn’t hear any movement in the house, he decided to risk it and ran naked to the bathroom. There, he cranked the water all the way cold, which felt like something he should be doing. Andrew Lin hadn’t asked to be cast in Yev’s wet dream, after all. There had to be some penance or something. 

The shower had the added benefit of waking Yev up the rest of the way, and he felt clear-headed enough to weigh the rest of his options as he toweled off. So maybe Emma wouldn’t dump him. Emma was the one, after all, who had gone off on those fucking homophobes David and Chad when they tried to make a big deal out of the fact that Yev’s parents were queer. Also Emma loved Yev’s mom, and Yev’s mom was definitely bi, though he wasn’t sure that’s the word she would use. Her go-to response to questions of sexuality was to wave a hand lackadaisically back and forth, as if assessing and dismissing an entire table’s worth of food as subpar, and trot out some Russian phrase. Yev’s Russian was pretty good for someone who’d never been there, but when his mom went double barreled on the idioms, he was totally lost. 

He could call Emma, but she was at Interlochen for the summer and the cell reception there was for shit. They’d managed to make it work a couple times, but Yev wasn’t sure he wanted to yell this particular personal revelation into a bad connection. It would have to wait until August.

He shuffled back to his room, wrapped in a towel. The problem was that Yev had never seen much point in keeping his thoughts to himself, especially when they affected other people. His mom thought this was a hilarious trait and muttered things about recessive genes, but it also made her happy. When he was younger, like fifth grade, and stuff was bothering him and he told her about it, she’d listen, then hug him, and call him “my good boy.” Yev would rather strip naked and run through the halls at school than admit it, but he liked it when she said that. It made him feel safe, loved, like he was doing the right thing.

He could call his mom. She said, when she dropped him off and left for a week at the spa, that he could. But it would be so pathetic. And how would that even go? “Hi, Mom, I know this is the first time you’ve taken for yourself in literal years, but I’m kind of losing my shit over a non-issue so could you drop everything and deal with this please?” No thank you.

Downstairs, there was clattering in the kitchen, the kind designed to wake a sleeping teenager. Yev had like five minutes to get dressed before someone came to get him, if the past two mornings were anything to go by. In his dad’s house, no one was allowed to sleep in, apparently.

He pulled on jeans and shoes—there were gnarly raised nails on the stairs that’d snagged more than one of his socks—and then finally decided on the _Stranger Things_ shirt Emma had gotten him for his birthday. It was sleeveless. He’d seen old photos of his dad; Yev could tell the shirt made him look more like him. And they were trying to _bond_ or whatever. That was half the point of his mom’s vacation.

Even the stuff she did for herself had to have an ulterior motive.

He’d tried to explain it to Emma once, and she maybe even understood, maybe she could track the many chapters of family history, but she still looked at him like he had wandered out of _Oliver Twist_. There weren’t many people like Yev at Roycemore. Maybe there was someone else with a dad on the South Side, maybe even a dad who had done time. But no one else in Evanston, that Yev had met, had a mother like his, who had wrenched herself out of poverty when Yev was just a toddler by marrying an old dude, and then, when he died, marrying another old dude who _didn’t_ have a prenup, and then, when _he_ died, buying a bunch of statuary for the backyard and becoming a CPA. 

Yev didn’t remember any of his mom’s husbands very well—the North Shore ones or the unofficial one who came before—but the day his mom sat him down and told him about his real father was still engrained in his memory. He was in seventh grade when she dropped the bombshell: Yev’s father had been in prison, yes, like he’d grown up knowing, but then he’d been released. And it had taken him a while but he was ready to meet his son.

“But we met,” Yev said, because there was one picture—a single picture, of a young Mickey Milkovich holding a tiny baby Yev, both of them looking like they’re about to spit up—that his mom had given him to keep in his bedside drawer. No one in Yev’s life was really religious, and he wasn’t sure whether he believed in God or not, but sometimes when he was feeling like it might be nice to have a father, he got that picture out and said a tiny prayer. The prayer never had much shape to it, but it was always in the direction of his dad. Like: this man is my father. Please.

“And now it is time to meet again,” his mother said, and they did. It took some time, but Mickey came up to Evanston on the train and they went to get frozen yogurt and it was like watching a sponge take on water. That was how Yev thought of it later, anyway. When he was thirteen, he mostly just wondered what had taken his dad so long.

Out in the hallway, another door opened. There was shuffling down to the bathroom, and the click of the lock. That was everyone accounted for: Yev and his dad and his dad’s boyfriend, Ian. Depending on the type of day Ian was having, he was either the one downstairs, back from a run, or the one in the bathroom, shaking off sleep, and either way Yev wanted to get downstairs immediately because if there was any chance of bacon it would be gone in approximately ten seconds once his dad got into it.

That was the right call. Yev nudged the door to the kitchen open and was immediately caught in a wave of bacon smell and public radio. Ian looked up from the stove. “Hey, Yevgeny,” he said. He nodded toward the radio. “You can switch that off.”

Yev switched it off. He leaned against the counter. “I didn’t know you listened to NPR.”

“Sometimes,” said Ian. “I’m trying to be more informed. Care more about the world, you know?”

“Sure,” said Yev.

“Your dad up?”

“I think he’s taking a shower.”

“Good,” said Ian. He poked the bacon. “That look done to you?”

“I don’t know,” Yev hedged. “I like it kind of crispy.”

Ian shook his head. “Why am I not surprised? You Milkoviches never met a meat you didn’t want to char.”

When Ian said stuff like that, made these sweeping pronouncements about what Mickey’s family—Yev’s family—was like, it sometimes made Yev feel sad. Like, Ian did know better than Yev what Milkoviches did with their meat, but Yev _was_ a Milkovich, and— 

Oh God. What Milkoviches did with their meat. The dream came roaring back.

“Are you okay?” Ian was staring at him. “You just got all flushed.”

“Fuck,” said Yev. He buried his head in his hands. “No, nothing. Just kill me.”

“I’m definitely not gonna do that. Hold on.” From between his fingers, Yev watched Ian move the bacon onto a plate and turn off the stove. “Come sit over here.”

For their kitchen table, Yev’s dad and Ian had this rickety wooden table pressed against the kitchen wall. When Yev arrived, half of it was covered in old mail, with only two places set. Now there was a place for Yev, with a napkin in a napkin ring shaped like a shark. 

(“Your mom said you were nuts for sharks,” Yev’s dad said, and Yev said, “Yeah, when I was eight,” and regretted it almost immediately when Mickey’s face fell.) 

Ian and Yev sat down at the table and Ian gave him this expectant look and Yev felt his face get even warmer. He had to be purple by now, like he got after they ran the mile at school. The first time, his PE teacher walked up to him all concerned like Yev was having a heart attack, and Yev had to explain that, no, it was just his face, his weird pale alien skin.

Andrew Lin had been there, too. He’d said, “Nice sunburn, bro.”

“I think,” Yev began, because he had to say something before this awkward silence got any more awkward, “I mean, no, I don’t think, I know. I had a sex dream about a friend. Well, no, not a friend, more like an acquaintance. A classmate. A hot classmate. And I think I should probably just forget all about it because it doesn’t matter but it, um, messed with my head.”

Ian blinked.

“Oh God, why am I telling you this?” Yev resisted the urge to bang his head against the table. “Is this, like, because of some weird counselor spell you can put on people? Or. I mean, they do say to talk about it with someone who might understand. Jesus. Can we please forget I said anything?”

Ian looked as though he was trying really, really hard not to laugh, which weirdly did make Yev feel better. If the focus was on his sudden verbal diarrhea, maybe they could just leave it there. “First of all," said Ian, "I’m not a counselor, I’m a peer support specialist. And I don’t think I do have those special powers, though it’d be nice.”

“Yeah,” said Yev.

Ian looked at him. “If you really don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to. You just kinda look like you’re about to explode. Was it one of Emma’s friends?”

Ian remembered Emma’s name. That was surprising, since Yev’s mom mostly just called her “the little blonde girl.” “Um, no,” said Yev. “It was a guy.”

“Um,” said Ian. “Okay.”

“So that’s it,” said Yev, only slightly hysterically, he was proud to note. “I was always totally down with gay stuff, obviously—respect—but I never thought of myself as anything other than a Kinsey zero and it turns out I’m more of a, like, one or two. Or maybe more! Who even knows!”

“What’s a Kinsey zero?” asked Ian.

It didn’t seem like Ian was messing with him. Sometimes Yev forgot that not everyone knew these things. Ian probably hadn’t heard of a bunch of the stuff Yev knew from school and his queer friends, unless they were mentioned on NPR recently. And that was fine, but it still made Yev’s chest ache to think of what it must have been like to have the knowing first and the knowledge second. He was lucky. “The Kinsey Scale was invented by this guy Kinsey to explain the spectrum of sexuality. So, like, straight is zero and gay is six and everything between is everything between.”

“Are you…” Ian trailed off. “I’m really glad you’re telling me this, Yev. I’m trying not to say the wrong thing.”

“Sure, yeah,” said Yev, a little faintly.

“It’s just that, in the past, when people have come out to me, it hasn’t gone well.” He shrugged, did a little self-deprecating laugh. “Go figure.”

“Oh,” said Yev, sobering. He didn’t know everything, but he knew there were things in his dad’s past that were really, seriously dark. “You mean when you and my dad—”

“No,” said Ian. “More like I didn’t know anything about trans people and I thought bisexuality was fake.”

“Do you still think it’s fake?” Yev asked. “Because—”

“No,” said Ian, quickly. “No, I know it’s real. Is that—”

“Yeah,” said Yev. “I think so.”

“Okay,” said Ian. “Well, congrats." He smiled. "Sorry the dream was weird, but it got you here, right?”

Yev hadn’t thought about it that way—he hadn’t had time to think about it that way—but Ian had a point. With any luck he’d stay with Emma forever and never talk to Andrew Lin again, but his muscles would always be the reason Yev realized this crucial thing about himself and that, as MasterCard said, was priceless. 

Of course this was the moment Yev’s dad came in, and he’d have to be pretty oblivious not to notice the capital-M Mood he’d walked into. He looked from Ian to Yev and back again, then barreled past them to the counter. “No,” he said. “No heart to hearts before I have my fucking coffee.”

“There’s bacon,” said Ian, getting up. 

“There something wrong with it? You two aren’t eating.”

“It’s fine,” said Ian. “We hadn’t gotten around to it. No, stay there, Yev, I’ll bring you some. You want milk or orange juice?” He smirked. “Or both?”

“Both,” said Yev, on a surge of adrenaline. “And also water!”

“Huh?” said Ian.

“Thirsty, much?” his dad muttered.

“I’ll just have orange juice,” said Yev. Then, because apparently he couldn’t let a single thing alone today, “For now.”

His dad and Ian moved around the kitchen, getting coffee and orange juice, lifting down plates and finding silverware. Their kitchen was tiny and cramped compared to Yev’s kitchen back home, but they clearly knew how to move around it together. It kind of reminded Yev of that weird modern dance thing Emma’s sister was in at Northwestern.

As they moved, they had that boring morning conversation adults liked to have—“Sleep okay?” “Yeah. You?”—except their version of it was so specifically them that Yev could envision a huge, neon On Brand sign floating above their heads. Like how Mickey said, “Take your meds?” and Ian said, “Yeah. Any nightmares?” and Mickey said, “A couple. Hear any news?” and Ian said, “Yeah. He made bail.”

Yev had no idea who made bail. It could easily be one of Ian’s family members or one of his friends or one of the people he worked with at the clinic. He knew a little bit more about his dad’s nightmares, though he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to. He’d overheard a couple offhand comments, though, like the conversation his mom had with Ian on speakerphone a couple weeks before Yev came to stay. She was painting her nails and talking at the same time and she must have thought Yev was downstairs playing Skyrim.

“But you have accomplished a miracle,” she said. “You got Piece of Shit Ex-Husband to pay money to talk about his feelings, two things he most despises doing.”

Yev’s mom said, “Piece of Shit Ex-Husband” like other people said, “Beloved Friend.”

“It didn’t take much convincing after a week of nightmares,” Ian said over the phone. “I asked him if the idea of Yev coming to stay was messing him up and he said no, but then he asked whether I could ask my therapist to recommend someone, which he has literally never even thought about before.”

“These nightmares are not Zhenya’s fault,” his mom said in that fierce tone of voice that meant she thought someone was fucking with him.

“No, we know,” said Ian. There was a really long pause. “I think he’s just trying to figure out how to be a good dad and it’s bringing up a lot of stuff. But don’t worry. He’s dealing with it. Everything’ll be fine for the visit.”

It was, mostly. Yev felt weirdly at home at his dad’s house, a place where he’d only spent a couple nights before. It was pretty quiet. He could sometimes hear the El at night, a few blocks away, and once he was sure he heard shooting, but his dad told him it was fireworks. “You’d know if it was gunfire,” he said, and Yev wondered, _How?_ Sometimes he thought his dad didn’t really understand just how different Yev’s life was. 

“Hey. What’s up? Earth to Yev.”

Yev looked up. His dad was handing him a plate of eggs and bacon. The eggs were scrambled, which was Yev’s favorite. He wondered whether they had guessed or asked his mom. “Thanks.”

“Eat,” his dad said. He sat down with his own plate. Ian slid in opposite Yev. The table shuddered a little under all their plates and mugs.

Yev ate. His dad ate fast, as though he had somewhere to be even though Yev knew he had the day off. Ian, who did have somewhere to be, looked as though he was having a full thought between each bite. 

And, like, all of this was fascinating and whatnot, but that morning every moment was casually vibrating with an undercurrent of _I’m bi, I’m bi, I’m bi_ , so it was hard to spend much time caring or thinking about anything else for too long. 

“I need to do some laundry,” said Yev, because no one ever said he was good at silences. 

“I’m doing some,” his dad said, mouth half full. “Throw it in.”

“So domestic. I swear,” said Ian. “If the guys from the neighborhood could see you now…”

Mickey flipped him off. 

“It’s sheets and stuff,” Yev said.

Mickey stared at him. “They were clean when you got here. What’ve you—oh.” He smirked. “Forgot what it was like, being seventeen.”

Yev groaned. These people were going to make him blush to death.

After breakfast, Ian left for work and Yev went grocery shopping with his dad, which was just as hilarious as he remembered it being last time. His dad could do price comparisons at the drop of a hat, but he got overwhelmed when it came to fresh produce. He stared at the list, then back at the pile of melons. “They all look the same. How the fuck am I supposed to know which one’s ripe?”

“I think you’re supposed to smell the bottom.”

“Smell it?”

“At the bottom, yeah.”

His dad stared at him. “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I ever heard. Who told you that?”

Yev shrugged. “Gemma and Amy come up to visit sometimes and they like to go to Whole Foods and then the beach.”

“Don’t get in the lake,” said Mickey, picking up the closest melon like it was a bomb and lifting it to his nose. “You’ll grow a second head or something.”

After shopping, they came back to the house and Yev did laundry while his dad did something with wood in the basement. He’d started building things when he got rid of the last of his guns, or at least that’s what he said when Yev went down to the basement to store his suitcase and found a pile of wood and a half-assembled dresser. Yev was pretty sure his dad still had a handgun, because he sure had a handgun-size safe next to his bed, but the collection that’d apparently been famous around the neighborhood was gone: sold or, in the case of the automatic rifles, dropped at one of those police buyback amnesty days.

When the laundry was done, Yev made his bed again and went downstairs. His dad wasn’t working on anything, he was sitting on the wobbly stool that had been one of his first efforts, scrolling through his phone. He had reading glasses on and the t-shirt Yev got him when he went to the U of I for a college visit over Spring Break. It said, in big orange and blue letters, “MUCK FICHIGAN.” He looked like such a _dad_. 

“Whatcha looking at?” Yev asked, and his dad startled a little, his hand tightening on the phone. He wasn’t a jumpy guy, but he didn’t like surprises. Yev had known this for as long as he’d known him, but it was easy to forget sometimes. 

Mickey quickly recovered. “Porn,” he said. He clicked his screen off and put the phone in his pocket.

Yev perched on the bottom stair. "Ha, ha."

“Well, it’d be more fun,” said Mickey. He ran a hand across his face. His other hand twitched over his phone in his pocket. “Just more fucking money gone on shit I thought was covered. My advice? Don’t do anything wrong, only make friends, get some bland job or marry a rich chick, and pray you got your mom’s genes because her brand of batshit is better than anything you can get over here.”

For a split second, Yev thought his dad was talking about Ian, and his stomach dropped. Was something wrong? Then he remembered what he’d overheard. “Oh,” he said. He wanted to tell his dad it was okay. Yev got that his dad and everyone he grew up around thought therapy was basically snitching—like snitching on your own emotions or something—but from what little he knew and the ton of hints that’d been dropped over the past few years, he thought his dad could really benefit from having someone to talk to. Someone whose feelings didn’t matter to him. Someone who wasn’t tied up in the bad stuff as well as the good. “Yeah. I don’t know,” Yev said. “I might not marry a rich chick, though.”

“Middle class is fine,” said Mickey, rolling his eyes. “If that’s even still a thing by the time you get hitched.”

“No,” said Yev. He was starting to get nervous, which was stupid, he knew. Still, he couldn’t help it. He was supposed to be bonding with his dad, not causing him nightmares and sending him to therapy for reasons Yev only half-understood yet completely believed. He was supposed to be on vacation, not babbling about jizz sheets and fast-tracking a sexual awakening.

But one thing felt right: the label he’d been trying on in his head, wearing around all day as he had breakfast and went shopping and did laundry. To his list of worries, he easily could have added the speed at which all this was happening. One dream and he knew? And yet of that, Yev was completely sure. It wasn’t that the dream had told him anything he didn’t know; it had provided a lens for what was already there.

Mickey was watching him closely. Even that was kind of a big deal. It had taken his dad a while to get good at eye contact. “You got something you want to tell me, kid?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Yev, but then he couldn’t say anything else. He heaved a breath. “Dad?”

“What?” asked Mickey, not brusquely, like Yev would’ve expected.

“I just wanted you to know,” he began, and his dad smiled, and everything inside him relaxed. This could be okay. Everything could be okay. “I’m bisexual,” Yev said.

And his dad said, “No shit?” He looked interested, but completely unsurprised. Yev got a brief twinge—had everyone known before him?—but then remembered how surprised Ian had been. No, his dad hadn't known. He was just being his dad.

“No shit,” said Yev. “See, I had this dream, and I figured—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Mickey. He got up from his stool. “Give me a fucking hug. Then you can tell me about your boring-ass dream.”

So Yev got up too and hugged his dad, who smelled like sweat and wood shavings and the cigarettes he hadn’t managed to quit yet. Yev started crying, then he started laughing. Mickey pulled him away to look at him. “You fucking lunatic,” he said. He was smiling. “So come on. Talk.”


End file.
